2) The ability to independently encode the bitrate settings of individual sound files in .FLAs when publishing to SWF, or at the very least an option not to re-encode the sound files if you've already imported them into the .FLA as MP3s.

This is useful for placing different sound assets with different bitrate settings so you can have for example, low bitrate sound for background music to save space, and higher bitrates for main sound effects or voices.